2 CHALK FARMING IN WILTSHIRE 



wherever the land had been enclosed, and the Norfolk 

 four-course system was in vogue in Herts in the early 

 years of the eighteenth century, having " growed " no 

 one knows how or where. 



But without denying Norfolk its pride of place, it 

 was more convenient to begin our journey farther 

 south and west ; we were out to see arable farming, 

 and it was therefore well to take the earlier country 

 first, because corn crops cannot be judged until they 

 approach harvest, especially in an abnormal season 

 like that of 1910, in which early promise had not 

 always been fulfilled. So we made our start on the 

 chalk in Wilts, and chalk farming is in many respects 

 the most distinctive feature of English agriculture. 

 No other geological formation is so widely and 

 uniformly developed ; from Salisbury Plain to the 

 South Downs and north to the Yorkshire Wolds the 

 chalk country possesses a character of its own both 

 in its contours and its agriculture. It constitutes the 

 earliest settled land in the country; the intrenched 

 camps, the barrows, the dykes, the trackways speak of 

 its pre-Roman inhabitants, while the lynches, terraced 

 on the sides of the steepest slopes that have now 

 generally reverted to grass, are evidence of a former 

 intensity of cultivation in marked contrast with its 

 sparse occupation to-day. It was the open, un wooded 

 surface that drew primitive man to the chalk ; elsewhere 

 primitive English land must have been largely scrub 

 and forest where it was not barren heath, and the 

 open country would be settled before clearings were 

 made. The chalk country, too, forms the essential 

 home of the sheep, and British farming systems have 

 mostly been based upon sheep-raising, which is still 

 the characteristic note of our agriculture as compared 

 with that of other countries. 



